


Finding Home

by beekeepercain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha Dean Winchester, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Omega Sam Winchester, Pregnant Sam, Queerplatonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 06:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7497651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beekeepercain/pseuds/beekeepercain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam drinks a lot of hot chocolate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Home

* * *

 

 

Sam comes home drenched, as if he walked through the storm raging for miles and miles, at least as far as Dean can see through the grey curtain of rain. That’s the first thing that Dean notices about him; his wet hair, black in the low light, sticking to his face. The second thing comes when Dean breathes. The strong scent of a claimed omega, pregnant to some alpha he’s never met.

It takes him a while to realise that he’s smelling Sam, his little brother, and not catching the trail of a couple on an extended honeymoon next door. His breath stills, and his eyes dart down towards the boy’s (is he a boy anymore at 19?) stomach, the swollen, round curve of it, the thickness of his thighs inside the stretchy yoga pants, the _softness_ of his look, and the small bump of his formerly quite flat chest underneath the brown t-shirt and the open black hoodie.

He steps back more out of shock and instinct than to welcome Sam back home, but his brother takes his chance and steps past him anyway. Behind him, a flash of white wipes out the motel’s parking lot, and Dean closes the door behind the dripping kid to the roar of thunder. They stand there, and Dean doesn’t know what to say or do. His entire body is twisting with hurt and fear, and he wants to gag. In the end, they both speak at once.

“I’m sorry,” Sam says.

“Dad can fix this,” Dean says.

They stare at one another, Sam’s eyes darker than Dean’s ever seen them, and a flood of nauseating shame pouring inside Dean’s stomach. There’s a silence that stretches on until Dean realises Sam’s literally walked through the closest thing earth has to offer in imitation of hell, and he steps to the side and pulls out a chair.

“Sit?” he asks, intending to offer or command, but managing neither.

Sam nods, and he collapses into the chair with a shudder. In four minutes, there’s water boiling in the filthy boiler, and the boy’s got a towel drawn around him like a soft blanket. Dean runs his fingers through his hair to reassure himself he’s really there, after almost two years; that it’s really Sam, and he’s not hallucinating or dreaming this.

“What - who…?” he finally speaks, struggling to find words.

Sam shrugs. Dean doubts it’s because he doesn’t know. He doesn’t seem to be making any efforts at taking off his wet, cold clothes, so Dean pushes a finger between the wet hoodie and the towel and starts undoing them for him. Sam lets him do it; piece by piece, Dean takes off his shirts until he’s topless. Between the hems of the towel, the older can clearly see the faint dark line forming over the middle of his belly. He drops to a crouch in front of his brother and grabs his hand.

“What happened?” he asks, this time more firmly, concerned.

Sam left to study. Not to get knocked up by a stranger. But he hasn’t seen Sam in - he wouldn’t know. And yet here he stands, no money or phone on him, bare feet inside his worn sneakers, looking like he left in the clothes he’d worn to bed some three days earlier. Muddy, worn, with dark rings around his eyes.

“Sammy?”

A dreadful, grimace-like dead smile visits Sam’s lips before fading, and Dean’s grateful it does.  
“My first heat,” he says in a husk of his usual voice.

After that, he doesn’t talk. Dean makes him hot chocolate from a couple bags of powder he’s stolen from diners along the way, and tucks him in at half past eight in the evening.

He sleeps well into afternoon the next day.

 

* * *

 

“I had a girlfriend,” Sam says, the first thing since last night.

Dean glances up at him, half his vision blocked by the fluff of his pillow. Sam’s spread on the bed, comfortingly like he always used to be; one foot pressing against his knee, one arm underneath his head, and one hand over the swell of his stomach. He’s wearing one of Dean’s shirts with the AC/DC logo almost invisible on the front, white on black, and he’s staring at the splotches on the ceiling with an indifferent expression on his face.

“Yeah?” Dean encourages him, “She pretty?”

Sam nods.

“She, uh -” Dean tries to ask him, but fails to find the words.

“No. Wasn’t her.”

“Oh.”

They’re quiet for a moment again. Sam wipes an itch from the tip of his nose before returning his hand on his stomach.

“This one guy,” he continues then, “caught my scent. ’t was before I realised I was - I’d never - I didn’t know what all the symptoms were. I thought I was getting sick. He - it wasn’t - not non-consensual, but I didn’t -”

“You went with it.”

“I went with it.”  
Sam tastes the words in his mouth and finally accepts them with a nod.  
“And he wouldn’t let me out afterwards. Kept saying - I was his, you know? I was his.”

Dean wants to kill this motherfucker, but he doesn’t let out a word, just a small, whimper-like sound.

“I couldn’t get out. He kept going to classes, and I was - didn’t have my phone, didn’t have - until - I guess - nobody really - they thought I’d taken off. I guess everyone else smelled it coming before I did. I realised I was - after a few weeks when I started getting sick.”

“And he _still_ kept you in?”

Sam nods.  
“It took me _ages_ to break out,” he says in a hollow voice, “and between there, he kept - doing it - kept… taking me, you know?”

Dean’s fingertips ache. He can almost feel the bastard’s skin tearing underneath his nails. He can _feel_ his blood pouring out when he twists his throat open and drags his tongue out through it by the root with his bare hands.

“Once I got out, I didn’t - I panicked. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I hitched most of the way. Walked between where I couldn’t. I should have gone to the police, should have told _someone_ , but who are they gonna believe, Dean? A pregnant omega, or a reputable alpha studying law?”

“You’re a reputable omega studying law, Sam -”

“To them, I dropped out.”

Dean swallows burning bile just barely in time to prevent it from flooding his mouth. Sam looks at him, and there’s a hollow behind his eyes that Dean never wanted to see there.

“I couldn’t find you at first,” he chuckles, throws his head as if to shake it but it’s mostly stuck inside the other fluffy pillow, and the gesture doesn’t earn its place.  
“I stole newspapers to try and figure out where the hell you’d be going. I knew Dad was after - whatever. But I didn’t know if you were with him, or if you were alone. So I had to - I had to _find_ you, you know? So that’s another two weeks of me just, just wandering around the country.”

“How did you make it?” Dean asks him, his head spinning even though he’s lying quite still on the bed.

“People seem to take pity on an omega if he’s on the streets. I guess I look like shit.”

“You do.”

Sam nods.  
“So, yeah, mostly I got freebies. Free meals, free rides, and shelters were always open as long as they could see I was… you know.”  
He swallows the word ‘pregnant’, as if unable to say it so soon after the last time.

“It wasn’t easy, but it was a lot easier than I thought it would be.”

“No one hurt you?”  
Dean can’t say 'again’, even though his mouth shapes the word. Sam shakes his head.

“Nope. Guess there’s still some good in the world after all,” he laughs and turns back towards the ceiling.

Dean watches his palm travel the bump of his belly and swallows thickly, painfully.  
“How far along you think you… I mean… can we still, can we still find someone to… take care of that? Legally? Quasi-legally?”

Sam’s eyes flash towards Dean. His lips thin as he presses them together, then part as his tongue drags across them in a nervous fashion. He shakes his head again.  
“No one’s taking care of anything, Dean.”

“What?”  
Dean frowns.  
“We can - we can still - it’s - it’s just a question of how hard it’s gonna be, Sammy. You’re not gonna be stuck with that. I swear.”

A tired smile spreads over Sam’s lips.  
“No, you don’t get it. I won’t _let_ anyone take care of anything. Alright?”

“You’re gonna - you can’t be - you _can’t_ , Sam.”

“I can. And I will.”

They breathe.

“It’s my child, Dean.”

 

* * *

 

Two weeks drag by them. Dean brings in more hot chocolate, finds a part-time job as a mechanic. Sam mostly sits inside huddled inside a blanket, this time a real one although not a very luxurious one, growing bigger and heavier and somehow calmer with each passing day. His bruises heal, even those that he tries to hide from Dean, and his scabs start falling off the same; John calls once or twice, but Dean fails to mention his brother’s appearance, and John fails to mention Sam’s gone missing in the first place. He’s been to Palo Alto, there’s no way he hasn’t within the past months, but somehow, they’re not meeting half-way with the riddle. Dean knows John’s worried, but he can’t give him the answer. He feels the truth is too heavy for him to bear, and much too difficult for him to voice.

Sam makes no effort to provide solace to his father either.

One Thursday, Dean drags him out the door and to a prenatal appointment; he’s four months pregnant with a healthy baby, and the doctor smiles at Dean and asks him if he’s got any questions about becoming a father. Dean stutters, blushes, but the word “brother” just doesn’t come out of his mouth. He breaks a teary-eyed smile and looks away, choking, unable to stop the ringing in his brains. Every part of him hurts like he’s been hit by a truck by the time they walk back to the Impala. They make a pit stop by a diner, and Dean orders Sam a tall milkshake while he drinks a similarly sized cup of black coffee himself. Neither of them talks. Outside, the autumn sun is smiling at the cracked pavements and the children balancing on the white lines of the parking lot: they scream and shriek and Sam’s palm is over his stomach again, and he’s looking at them absently with the straw poking him into the chin as his lips try and seek it out again. Unthinking, Dean reaches across the table and pats it away from him with his fingertip, and Sam slaps his hand away.

At night, they sleep close together. Sam’s chronically cold, and Dean’s pathologically protective of him. When his brother’s breathing steady and deep, and sleep is already taking over Dean just the same, he lets his arm cross Sam’s side and his hand spread over the tight-stretched shirt over his abdomen for the first time. He’s not sure if he’s imagining it, but it almost feels like something inside greets him with a soft nudge - he drifts away waiting for it to happen again, just to make sure.

 

* * *

 

“It’s, like, half-mine anyway,” Dean hears himself say over a coffee and yet another cup of hot chocolate a few days later.

Sam raises brows at him and laughs disbelievingly.  
“No, it’s not. Thank _God_ it’s not, fuck. If it was half-yours, we’d -”

“Shut up,” Dean groans and pushes his hand to the middle of the table as if imitating a punch - there’s no way he’d be punching Sam anywhere right now, but it’s not his conscious mind that registers this information.  
“It’s - what - one fourth mine?”

“That’s not how math works, Dean.”

“Whatever. Ugh. You know what I mean, Sam.”  
It’s Dean’s turn to taste the words in his mouth.  
“So, anyway, it’d just - it’d be logical, right? That’s my nephew, or my niece or whatever, and you can’t take care of it alone. So why shouldn’t I - I mean, I’m your big brother, right? It’s, like, my responsibility to look after you _and_ your kid.”

He doesn’t expect the silence. Or maybe he did, but he dreaded it; regardless, the sudden presence of it between himself and Sam, who is looking at him like he’s just presented a highly controversial theory that has to be treated with caution, makes him more anxious than the howl of a werewolf or the call of a wendigo ever could.

“Have you actually _thought_ about that?” Sam finally asks him, his voice as if he’s talking to a mentally unstable grizzly.

Dean grimaces.  
“Of course I have. It’s everything I’ve been thinking about ever since you - ever since you said you wouldn’t have it aborted. I can’t force you, can I? And I mean, I’ve seen you - I’ve been looking after you since you came back, and I’ve seen, I know, fuck, I know how bad you want that kid. No matter how it got started, or whatever.”

Sam huffs, but Dean ignores him.

“You need help with it and I can help you. I can provide for you _and_ the kid if I take the job they offered me, full-time.”

“But I can’t provide for _you_ ,” Sam reminds him, but Dean doesn’t have a clue what he’s being reminded of.

“Provide for me how? I can feed myself, Sam. I’d live under the same roof with you two. What else do I -”

“You’re an alpha, Dean. You need an omega. You need a mate. You need _to_ mate. I can’t give you that. I can’t - give you anything.”

Dean leans back slowly, his grimace widening.  
“Ew.”

Sam raises a brow and leans back, looking somewhat self-satisfied and victorious, as if he’s just won a debate.  
“See?” he sighs.

“No. Ew. I don’t _want_ that, Sam. And, what, where have you been the past ten years? You think I’ve abstained? I can keep getting girls all I want, Sammy. It’s not - this isn’t going to be a problem. I don’t want that from - you - I don’t want that. Alright? So don’t bother yourself with it. I can take care of myself, my - my _needs_ or whatever. And that’s beside the point anyway, because, look, what an alpha needs - I don’t care what you’d think looking, um, or listening to what people _say_ we need. Sex isn’t what I _need_. You’re my brother, but this - this could give me everything I need _as_ an alpha, Sam. A home. A kid. A partner who sticks with me for life. You think I need anyone, or anything, but you?”

They battle it out silently over the course of a few sips and the passing of twenty seconds. Then Sam lowers his gaze.

“Alright,” he finally says, “but only if this is still what you want three months from now. After that, you either walk out, or you stay. And if you stay, it’s - you don’t walk out. Ever. A kid - no kid - deserves that. It won’t be yours, Dean. Nothing will make it yours.”

“And that’s the last fucking thing I want. Alright? It’s mine enough, Sam. It’s mine through _you_. Your blood, my blood, it’s the same thing. But I _can_ be a father to it. Him. Her. She can be _ours_.”

Sam nods.

“I’m going to pick up some groceries,” Dean grunts and leaves his half-drank coffee on the table with Sam and his thoughts.

 

* * *

 

First snow comes and goes, and Dean starts working full-time, from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon like a good old rat skittering away in a sluggishly spinning wheel. They talk about, but do nothing to move past words with, moving out of the motel. The stolen bags of powdered hot chocolate make way for a container of the better stuff Dean brings back from yet another grocery run. Sam insists to stick along, picking out whatever green he can fit in his mouth; sometimes, he tops a honey-dressed chicken salad with mustard, but Dean doesn’t point out how gross that is until he’s done it seven times in a row.

Reality finally hits in the day they find a used old crib from a yard sale that they just can’t leave behind. They’ve got nowhere to put it, so it sits on the backseat of the Impala when Dean drives to work the next day. He counts his paycheck and realises that if they stretch it just a little bit, they can maybe pay off the first rent of a small apartment - make room for that damn thing to get it out of his car.

Sam’s got a few shirts and three pairs of stretchy jeans to haul into that new apartment by the end of the week. He goes straight to sleep while Dean tries to make the place livable, if not quite comfortable, with the two to three items they’ve managed to make theirs inbetween there. Two chairs, one table, and a worn-looking couch: he realises he’s never felt quite so damn _normal_ as he does now, hauling those few things up the three staircases with a helpful neighbour. The neighbour catches a glimpse of Sam wandering out of the bedroom in an extra-large t-shirt that Dean bought for him in place for proper and so much more expensive maternity clothing, and he smiles at them the same way the doctor performing Sam’s check-ups at the clinic does. Again, Dean does nothing to convince him they’re just brothers. They’re partners, anyway. Sam deserves better than the whole world knowing what happened to him, and Dean’s not there out of pity; the last thing he’s going to do is to try and drive a wedge between himself and his family now.

Seven months in, John finds them.

He sits at the table drinking coffee in full silence while Sam sits on the table opposite of him, his tall frame cloaked by a beige real-wool blanket, and explains the whole of his journey from the first day after leaving home to where he now sits, and Dean cowers in the corner, waiting for an explosion that never comes. When John stands up, he does it so slowly and weakly that he suddenly appears a man twice his age, and he walks around the table and hugs Sam close for a very long time before pouring another cup for himself, Dean assumes, mostly just to avoid either of them seeing him cry.

He settles into the same motel they left behind, and four days later, he comes looking for work while half of Dean’s hidden underneath a car. He hears them strike a deal, and John walks out again only to reappear the next morning.

“It’s what Mary would have wanted,” he mutters at the table, and Dean blows bubbles into his coffee to avoid crying.

 

* * *

 

Sam’s in labour for twelve hours and forty-two minutes. Dean’s not there - God, he just - can’t - but he’s right there when Sam’s resting with the red-skinned, wrinkly baby boy sleeping on his chest, and while Dean feels like he can hardly breathe, Sam’s just smiling, sometimes with his eyes closed and sometimes just looking at the small child he’s holding. Dean’s afraid to pick him up, but Sam needs to sleep, and while he’s out and there’s no one around, Dean takes the boy into his arms and tries to look for Sam in him. What he finds is himself; the baby’s got his lips and something like his jaw, too, and while his nose is Sam’s, his eyes are round and watery and blue like forget-me-nots.

He screams like the devil, but shuts up almost instantly when Sam crawls up from his bed and brings him to his chest, and his mouth attaches clumsily and hungrily to the puffy pink nipple standing out ready for him.

“This what you want?” Sam asks Dean, but it takes the older a few moments to realise he’s being addressed.

He has trouble tearing his eyes away from the kid, but when he does and finally manages to look Sam in the eye, he nods.

“This is good,” he promises; “This is - ’s good.”


End file.
